The History of the International Calling Card

Calling Cards, Phone Cards, FONCARD’s, are all names for the simple plastic card we carry to make a call.  Calling cards were invented in the fall of 1975. The company involved, SIDA, was not in the telecommunications industry, but was a manufacturer and supplier of vending machines. The first prepaid phone cards were produced and put on the market in Italy to combat payphone vandalism. In fact there was a shortage of coins in Italy at the time and payphone theft was common. Cards were introduced with a magnetic strip on the back for use in special phones to combat the coin shortage. The first cards were too thin and jammed frequently. International calling cards took approximately another 10 years for their use in the US. Since then the calling card and phone card industry has grown exponentially worldwide. Today, the international phone card is sold in over 185 countries around the world.  All of the major regional and long distance phone companies including All the Bell companies, Verizon, ATT, Sprint, MCI and the like, and many of the smaller carriers were offering pre-paid phone cards. Industry-wide revenues reached $12 billion in the US in 1992, and now in 2007 are over $33 billion in international call revenue.

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